Executive Briefing
Snapchat’s new toys, the role of Snap
Does Snap stand a chance?
By Dan Frommer on Friday, April 5, 2019 at 11:31 am
Snap, now in its third year as a public company, is in a precarious but perhaps hopeful place.
Two pessimistic narratives — that rival Instagram will simply steal its best ideas and most of its potential users, and that it is an unstable company led by a mercurial CEO — remain. But its user base seems to have stabilized without a major collapse, and Snapchat remains one of the most popular apps in the world, particularly with young users.
Snap is slowly figuring out how to build a business. And perhaps, if it can convince users, partners, and advertisers to stick along for the ride, it can keep building something better and more interesting. Its stock price has almost doubled so far this year.
Anyway, that was some of the backdrop for Snap’s first-ever Partner Summit, held yesterday at a studio lot in Los Angeles, where CEO Evan Spiegel and a handful of executives announced new features, platforms, and partnerships.
These included: Snapchat Stories in other apps, including Tinder; a broader set of improved tools for app developers; a new ad network for publishers, updates to its augmented reality Lenses/filters product, including new “Landmarkers” lenses for famous buildings; more Snap Originals video programming — Snap’s play at the future of television; and Snap Games, a new social gaming platform where you can play games with friends instantly within the Snapchat app.
Three major things stuck out to me:
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